Fintech Insider Podcast by 11:FS
00:03:13 · Pranav Sood, Benjamin Ensor
[00:03:13] S3: Absolutely. And firstly, thank you so much for having me back. I always think I'm gonna be banned after the last time, so it's good to good to keep on getting the invite. We at Airwallex are a payments and financial platform for global businesses. We help our customers to collect money, to hold money, to convert money, and send and spend that money around the world, both for themselves, but also to build embedded finance products for their customers. And, we serve many, many, many customers, including people like Brex and and Rippling and others from the fintech world, but also tens of thousands of SMEs globally as well. [00:03:45] S0: Fantastic. Thank you. I sincerely hope we've never banned anyone from this podcast because if you don't have diversity of thinking, if you can't challenge people, where are you? FinTech is all about diverse thinking and challenging shibboleths, isn't it? So welcome to our next guest, Jeremy Balkin, the founder of TodayPay. Thank you for joining us, Jeremy. We're obviously gonna get into your news a little bit, but can you tell people who've not come across you before a little bit about who you are and what you do?
00:03:45 · Benjamin Ensor, Jeremy Balkin
[00:03:45] S0: Fantastic. Thank you. I sincerely hope we've never banned anyone from this podcast because if you don't have diversity of thinking, if you can't challenge people, where are you? FinTech is all about diverse thinking and challenging shibboleths, isn't it? So welcome to our next guest, Jeremy Balkin, the founder of TodayPay. Thank you for joining us, Jeremy. We're obviously gonna get into your news a little bit, but can you tell people who've not come across you before a little bit about who you are and what you do? [00:04:15] S4: Sure Ben, and thanks for the opportunity to be here. My name is Jeremy Balkan, originally from Australia, live in New York. Most recently led FinTech and payments corporate development at JP Morgan, and then left there to build a startup from the ground up, we announced this week called TodayPay, and we're the world's first refunds as a service solution for marketplaces, merchants, insurance companies, and third party logistic providers.
00:04:40 · Benjamin Ensor
[00:04:40] S0: Fantastic. Well, welcome. Welcome to both of you. Alright. Well, let's get into the news. So our first story is kind of Jeremy's story, which is that JPMorgan's former head of FinTech has launched a new payment technology solution called TodayPay. This was announced at Money twenty twenty and TodayPay is billed as an innovative new payment platform founded by JPMorgan's former head of FinTech, Jeremy, who's just introduced himself. The new refund as a service platform promises to transform the refund process by offering instant refunds via a number of payment options. Though still in self, TodayPay already has some established backers including Visa and Amazon Web Services among others. TodayPay was built to decouple refunds, which Jeremy payment solution from the return. Sorry, which Jeremy says is a payment solution separated from the return, which is a logistics problem. In essence, the new approach to refunds is designed to increase checkout conversion rates, enhance customer loyalty and reduce disputes and fraud. So Jeremy, obviously we're gonna come to you first. I'm sure you can tell us a little bit more about it and how it came about.
00:05:45 · Jeremy Balkin
[00:05:45] S4: Well, thanks Ben. And I think it really like all good ideas that come from your significant other and in this case, it's my wife who for many years people I think incorrectly thought I was some sort of payments expert, but little did they know that actually my wife's the payments expert. Five years ago when my twins were born, my wife, Rebecca used to buy online often with the intention of returning, not knowing what size for our son or daughter or both. So she would often be buying four items with the intention to keep it to the fit to return it to the dinner. And one day we were in Manhattan out shopping in store, very unusually, not online, but in store. And I took out my Amex to pay for something and she grabbed my hand like this and said, pay with your debit card instead. And I hugely embarrassed because I wasn't carrying the debit card at the time. And I asked her, what did I miss here? And she said, I noticed that I get the refunds faster on a debit card often in two to three business days. When on the credit card, I'm always checking the statement. I never know when the money's coming back. I'm always calling the merchant to see if I even paid the money. They often say they did, it never appears until next month's credit card statement. And I left that experience going, my wife is the payments expert. And what did I miss here? And why does nobody look at, think about this magical refund rail that seems to be the best kept secret in payments? And so I spent the last five years really getting to understand every which way about why this rail is so broken. And I thought if someone wasn't gonna fix it, somebody better do that. And that's what led me to leaving the greatest job at the greatest firm in the world to go start from scratch and building this thing called TodayPay, which we've unveiled this week publicly, and trying to democratize the refund rail and create an alternative refund payment rail for merchants, consumers, marketplaces, third party logistics providers to have choice. It's not just about speed, but it's choice. And that's what I think is most important. We think of money, my choice is something that guides TodayPay. And we think that consumers and merchants should have choice and speed and certainty in the way payments are issued and received on the refund side of the equation.
00:08:01 · Benjamin Ensor, Jeremy Balkin
[00:08:01] S0: So that's fascinating. And I applaud your listening to your wife, which I'm reminded of daily. [00:08:10] S4: As am I, [00:08:11] S0: by the way. [00:08:11] S4: As am I. [00:08:12] S0: Before I bring in Pranav and Kate, very quickly, why is the refund process broken? I'm sure it's not a simple thing, otherwise it would have been fixed, but But what are some of the sort of root causes of this sort of broken refund process?
00:08:27 · Jeremy Balkin
[00:08:27] S4: I think you have to look at the way particularly The US payments system is structured first and foremost. I think rules and rails were designed and built that were fit for purpose twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years ago. I think that's sort of one structural piece to this problem. I think the other is historically merchants and consumers have probably accepted that refunds just have to be terrible and not realize that there could be a better way. And I think, again, part of that is a function of the way payments work today. I think also just consider the fact that we live in an instant gratification digital economy today. So again, when the rules were written, the rails were designed, were built for a set of circumstances and market conditions that were not like we have today. There are tons of structural impediments, but that doesn't mean it has to be that way. And in fact, there's no reason it means it has to be that way. And in fact, I just think refunds has always been a place where people have accepted. This is a place where money goes to die for a merchant. And we actually think it can become an intelligent acquisition channel for merchants and an alternative refund rail needed to be built. And that's really the value proposition of TodayPay in its first instance. And that's what's driving us to be the change Because when you look into the way that the world was designed, it does not have to be this way. It just took someone to say, you know what, enough is enough, let's go fix it.